Thursday, March 19, 2009

Fritzl's change of plea could, I suppose, be an attempt to reduce his sentence, but, as he is certain to spend the rest of his life in prison, this seems unlikely. His daughter, meanwhile, seems to be writing a book. I report these matters because, for the first time I have read a Fritzl story all the way through. Previously I have just glanced at them or, when the case comes on radio or television, thought about something else. This is not because I am squeamish, it is because such stories mean almost nothing to me. I don't draw vacuous conclusions about 'broken' societies nor do I even meditate anew on the human abyss. And I don't expect to learn any lessons from the case. As I said about Mary Bell, the singular extremity of such cases makes them useless as a basis for future policies. Vile people have alway done vile things. Tomorrow there will be another Fritzl. In fact, there are probably thousands of Friztls doing much the same kind of thing at this very moment. Either they get away with it or they don't live in societies with such a voracious media appetite for horror. Catching Fritzl and punishing him might make people feel better. It shouldn't.

16 comments:

Yes, it's horror-porn, and tells us nothing about anything except the truism that extremes exist. The nasty vicarious thrill at these stories is a human inevitable and is best suppressed.

I thought maybe movies like Saw, where the torture porn nihilim is justified just because it is nihilistic, was a modern invention ...but then I suppose Edgar Allen Poe was peddling the same thing and no doubt plenty before him going back to the Ancients and the cavemen, that's usually the way of it.

Totally agree Bryan. I can't read about him or watch his trial on TV either. The comment pieces are also cliche ridden- banality of evil being the favourite today. The attempts to extrapolate wider conclusions about Austria are also laughable- I mean did the Yorkshire Ripper tell us much about Britain?

My take was that, in the twisted way his mind must work he was seeking, without any hope of finding, some sort of rehabilitation, and with the media's appetite for this sort of goulish porn there may be some traction for him.Adolf and Eva, transplanted into our age, would doubtless be offered their own chatshow, to follow the publication of Adolf's best seller 'My Sorrow'.

Malty, I am so happy to have made you a Dexter convert! I can't wait for Season 4, myself.

As for Fritzl, it tells us quite a lot about the history of Vienna. Freud knew whereof he spoke when he said our dreams are all about incest and killing our parents and/or children. After all, he was a Viennese!

I was happy to see that at some point after this story broke last summer -- not long after that other story about the girl kidnapped in Austria and also kept in a dude's basement until she got free one day and he promptly offed himself by jumping in front of a train -- that someone published an essay in the TLS about a well-known tale in Vienna. Back to the early 19th century it went. What was it about? A father who kept a daughter locked up in the basement for raping purposes.

What goes around comes around. BTW, I often thought the worst Nazis (Hitler, anyone?) came from Austria. Something weird in that nation. Ergot (or whatever that mold is) in the rye or something.

Sorry, what are you trying to say about Austrians? Now there is a viable theory that madness expresses itself in culturally specific ways...but come off it...

Dexter, Malty? Tried it for a couple of episodes but found it too smug and queasy. Am just at the end of The Wire series 1 though, only 6 or 7 years behind everyone else. Bloody hell it's good, especially Omar.

The thing about Vienna Susan is its absolute dedication to the bourgeoisie creed, this is total, absolute, non reversible. Cream cake eating, real fur coat wearing, blue rinsed, shit faced, zither playing hell on earth. The Austrians up untill the late sixties were as poor as church mice, not today, watch Heimat, all is revealed, Nazi's, wot Nazi's.

Brit, 'twas your own TLS -- you know, that Sunday section of the Times edited by Peter Stothard -- that published the story to which I refer. I'm sure if you do a bit o' googling (which I know ya like), you can find it.

By the way, it's Edgar AllAn Poe. Common mistake, but annoying to see.

The Red Barn Murder (English countryside, 19th century) prompted someone to write a poem which later became a play, Malty. Engaged yokel killed his pregnant girlfriend and buried her in the red barn. Then her mom started having dreams about her ghost there.

I have however been playing the blog comment game for long enough to learn the Golden Rule: never shit a shitter. And if someone throws a big juicy bit of bait into the water, try not to bite too hard on the hook.

Oh yeah, and Edgar Allen Poe was the British cousin of Edgar Allan, and is widely acknowledged to be the superior writer. Owing to the notorious editorial incompetence and appalling taste of that rag he never got published in the TLS, sadly, and he took this crushing disappointment to his grave.

A blog about, among other things, imaginary ideas - What ifs? and Imagine thats. What if photographs looked nothing like what we see with our eyes? Imagine that the Berlin Wall had never come down. What if we were the punchline of an interminable joke? All contributions welcome.